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IN  MEMORIAM 

George  Davidson 
1825-1911 


Professor  of  Geography 
University  of  California 


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J¥E  WAR  TO  END 
ONLY  WHEN  THE  REBELLION  CEASES, 

BY   HENRY   W.    BELLOWS,   D.D. 


NEW-YORK: 

s  o  N    r>.    in.    R  A  JST  r>  o  L  i>  n, 

No.  683    Broadway, 


isumm  in  %ll  Souls 


ON   THE   OCCASION   OF 


THE  NATIONAL  FAST, 


3O,     1863. 


Published  by  ANSON  D.  F.  RANDOLPH,  683  Broadway,  corner  of  Amity 

Street,  New-York. 


THE  WAR  TO  END 
ONLY  WHEN  THE  REBELLION  CEASES. 


BY    HE1SHRY    W.    BELLOWS,  D.D. 


"  SHALL  I  not  visit  for  these  things  ?  saith  the  Lord  :  shall  not  my  soul  be  avenged 
on  such  a  nation  as  this  ?  A  wonderful  and  horrible  thing  is  committed  in  the  land. 
The  prophets  prophesy  falsely,  and  the  priests  bear  rule  by  their  means.  And  my  peo 
ple  love  to  have  it  so :  and  what  will  ye  do  in  the  end  thereof?" — JEREMIAH  5  :  29,  30,  31. 

THE  Head  of  our  Nation,  by  solemn  proclamation,  summons  this 
whole  people  together  to-day,  to  confess  its  sins,  and  to  implore  the 
mercy  of  God  upon  our  torn  and  distracted  country.  It  is,  indeed,  a 
fitting  service!  Pray  God  it  may  be  performed  in  a  sincere  and 
thoughtful  spirit!  Every  nation  has  abundant  cause  to  confess  its 
sins ;  for  what  people  ever  yet  walked  humbly  and  consistently  in  the 
way  of  God's  commandments  ?  Our  own  country,  blessed  with  such 
an  origin  and  such  a  heritage,  has  peculiar  reasons  for  acknowledging 
its  unfaithfulness ;  special  occasion  for  humbling  itself  beneath  the 
chastenings  of  the  Almighty.  For  we  have  grievously  sinned  against 
light,  liberty,  and  love.  With  more  blessings,  material,  moral,  and 
spiritual,  than  ever  fell  to  any  nation ;  a  fresh  and  unpolluted  soil ;  an 
isolation  from  the  old  world,  with  its  rooted  errors  and  transmitted 
wrongs  ;  a  government  based  upon  impartial  respect  for  human  rights  ; 
a  wide-spread  system  of  popular  education,  and  a  free  press ;  perfect 
toleration  in  matters  of  faith,  with  a  universal  reverence  and  support 
for  religious  institutions  —  what  excuse  is  there  for  our  not  being  a 
wise,  a  justice-loving,  a  temperate,  a  moral,  and  a  God-fearing  people? 
With  tyrants  or  sensualists  for  their  monarchs ;  a  proud  and  pampered 
aristocracy  oppressing  the  middle  or  the  poorer  classes ;  without  re 
presentation  in  the  government ;  robbed  of  schools ;  penned  up  in  com- 


W29O198 


pulsory  churches;  soured  by  want;  degraded  by  excessive  toil ;  mad 
dened  by  injustice;  with  doubts  or  defiance  toward  a  God,  whose 
priestly  representatives  so  unworthily  reveal  Him  —  what  wonder  if 
coarse  appetites,  if  violent  crimes,  if  low  morals  and  infidel  thoughts 
mark  the  populations  of  many  European  kingdoms?  It  is  very  little 
to  our  credit  that  we  surpass  the  very  best  of  foreign  nations  in  morals 
and  piety.  We  might  as  well  boast  of  the  larger  products  of  our  fat 
Western  soil!  The  question  for  us  is  —  and  God  is  putting  it  now 
with  fearful  distinctness  —  are  we  in  any  fair  degree  equal  in  our 
morals  and  piety,  as  a  people,  to  our  talents,  opportunities,  and  privi 
leges  ?  If  we  are  not,  we  are  sure  to  suffer  by  laws  as  inexorable  as 
those  that  govern  the  stars  in  their  courses.  Privileges  of  all  kinds 
involve  relative  responsibilities.  Light  must  illumine  or  blind  ;  liberty 
turn  to  law  or  license ;  knowledge  expand  or  puff  up ;  wealth  refine 
or  soften  and  betray.  Religion,  if  it  does  not  make  saints,  makes 
hypocrites  or  atheists  !  This  American  people  must  either  be  the  best 
or  the  guiltiest  people  on  God's  earth.  There  is  no  middle  place  for 
it.  Its  gifts,  endowments,  historic  and  physical  position,  political, 
economical,  educational,  and  religious  circumstances  and  opportunities 
are,  in  character  and  sum,  so  vast,  peculiar,  emphatic,  and  providential, 
that  they  must  either  prove  a  mighty  pedestal,  lifting  America  to  an 
unparalleled  glory,  or  a  stone  of  wrath,  falling  upon  our  heads  and 
grinding  us  to  powder. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  for  five  and  twenty  years  past,  to  say 
the  least,  the  American  people  have  been  making  greater  progress  in 
every  thing  else  rather  than  in  morals  and  piety.  They  have  advanced 
immensely  in  area,  agriculture,  manufactures,  commerce,  wealth,  and 
power !  The  triumphs  of  their  ships  and  their  iron-roads,  their  canals 
and  their  intercommunications  of  all  kind ;  the  discovery  of  the  mines 
of  California ;  the  invention  of  telegraphy ;  the  vast  growth  of  the 
planting  interest  —  these  have  been  kept  full  pace  with  by  their  im 
proved  systems  of  popular  education  ;  their  rapid  advances  in  the  arts 
and  sciences ;  in  the  application  of  machinery  to  tillage ;  in  the  extr$- 
ordinary  improvement  in  the  character,  style,  and  comfort  of  dwellings, 
the  architecture  of  public  buildings,  and  the  decoration  of  cities. 
Church-building  itself,  within  that  period,  has  made  a  notable  improve 
ment.  Meanwhile,  the  popularization  of  music,  of  painting  and  sculp 
ture,  of  photographic  art,  of  landscape  gardening,  and  rural  ceme 
teries  and  public  parks,  has  thrown  a  cultivated  and  refined  air  about 
our  civilization,  which  has  been  similarly  marked  in  costume  and  do 
mestic  elegance.  I  am  imTmed  to  think,  too,  that  decency  and  deco- 


3 

rum  of  manners  li.ivc  advanced  ;  that  we  have  acquired  more  self- 
control  by  a  greater  familiarity  with  the  temptations  which,  in  our 
first  taste  of  them,  overthrew  so  many ;  that  with  a  larger  general 
use  of  wealth,  there  is  — always  excepting  the  newly  rich,  who  adopt 
a  barbaric  magnificence  and  profuseness  —  a  more  moderate  and  pru 
dent  use  of  money  ;  that  with  a  freer  and  more  general  use  of  stimu 
lants,  there  is  less  intemperance ;  and,  in  short,  that  with  not  more 
principle  or  piety,  there  is  more  good  taste,  decency  and  decorum. 
Amons  the  most  pleasant  of  these  indications  is  the  fact  that  young 
men,  born  to  easy  circumstances,  are  no  longer,  what  for  a  generation 
or  two  they  were,  almost  as  a  rule,  the  necessary  victims  of  their  po 
sition.  They  have  learned  how  to  enjoy  life,  without  throwing  them 
selves  away !  There  is  a  far  happier  and  safer  relation  between  child 
ren  and  parents,  more  mutual  confidence  and  companionship,  and  far 
less  peril  and  less  actual  ruin  from  dissipation  than  ten,  and  especially 
than  five  and  twenty,  years  back.  In  all  these  respects,  there  has  been 
progress. 

It  seems  to  me,  however,  tliat  in  respect  of  absolute  morals  and 
piety,  we  have  not  been  making  a  corresponding  progress ;  nay,  that 
in  very  important  particulars,  we  have  degenerated,  and  sufficiently  to 
deserve  and  to  receive  the  solemn  warning  and  chastening  of  divine 
Providence. 

The  last  five  and  twenty  years  have  been  eminently  an  era  of  exter 
nality,  of  material  development,  of  outside  show  and  polish.  Morals, 
religion,  art,  trade,  commerce  have  accommodated  themselves  to  what 
was  expedient,  practicable,  acceptable,  easy,  and  pleasant.  It  has 
been  a  period  of  universal  compromises  and  concessions.  Every  body 
has  been  trying  to  make  money  ;  and  other  things,  by  general  consent, 
have  been  accommodated  to  the  money-makers.  Religious  sects  have 
cut  off  their  corners  and  become  as  smooth  to  each  other  as  stones  in 
the  same  brook.  Political  parties  have  seldom  kept  their  own  princi 
ples  long  enough  to  have  any  serious  and  valuable  result  from  their 
conflict.  Manners  have  grown  easy  and  insincere  ;  education  general, 
ornamental,  and  superficial.  There  is  little  study,  little  substantial 
reading,  little  original  scientific  discovery ;  there  is  almost  no  earnest 
and  original  poetry.  When,  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  I  came 
to  New-York,  there  was  a  small  school  of  serious,  earnest,  and  high- 
aiming  artists  here.  AVe  have  twenty  times  their  number  now,  and  a 
hundred  times  the  patronage  for  art,  but  certainly  no  more  of  the 
school  I  name,  and,  I  think,  not  so  many.  Literary  and  thoughtful 
society  is  equally  in  a  state  of  decay.  Even  those  nurseries  of  original 


thought  and  refined  taste  —  the  college  societies  —  where,  thirty  years 
ago,  noble  young  men  plumed  their  wings,  made  their  debuts  as  states 
men,  as  debaters,  as  poets,  and  historians,  have  declined,  until  elegant 
scholarship,  literary  ambition,  and  poetical  aspiration  have  become 
almost  unknown.  A  college-student  prides  himself  much  more  on 
rowing,  gymnastics,  and  pugilism,  than  on  classical  or  mathematical 
learning,  least  of  all  on  literary  tastes,  which,  if  he  has  them,  he  keeps 
them  to  himself. 

While  external  accomplishments  and  outward  ease  and  polish  have 
thus  taken  characteristic  possession  of  colleges  and,  I  fear,  of  young 
ladies'  schools,  a  corresponding  degree  of  attention  to  the  outside  has 
weakened  religion.  We  have  beautiful  churches,  but  where  are  the 
saints?  We  have  eloquent  and  practical  sermons,  but  where  the 
sound,  penetrative,  and  soul-piercing  doctrines ;  where  the  earnest  and 
devout  lives ;  where  the  unworldly  and  holy  disciples  ?  I  suspect  a 
large  part  of  the  toleration  of  our  day  rightly  named  would  be  called 
religious  indifference ;  a  large  part  of  the  alleged  improvement  in 
dogma,  theological  ignorance  and  apathy.  Religion  has  degenerated 
into  an  ethical  system;  it  devotes  itself  to  trimming  the  lawn,  instead 
of  ploughing  up  and  planting  the  field.  It  is  polite,  civil,  gentle, 
elegant,  smooth,  popular ;  when  it  ought  to  be  stern,  stout,  aggressive, 
commanding,  solemn,  and  uncompromising.  As  a  consequence,  it  has 
no  enemies,  but  also  few  devoted  friends.  There  is  nothing  to  pro 
voke  either  attack  or  unbelief  in  so  negative  a  thing,  and  accordingly 
angry  skepticism  and  passionate  denial  are  both  passed  by.  No  longer 
do  young  men  of  burning  hearts  find  themselves  called  to  the  ministry 
of  such  a  mediocre  piety ;  and  all  the  elegance  of  churches,  and  all 
the  liberality  of  parishes,  can  not  attract  the  best  gifts  to  the  service 
of  the  altar.  Only  divine  love,  only  Christ-like  faith  ever  drew  a  true 
minister  into  the  profession  we  still  call  sacred ! 

And  when  education,  literature,  poetry,  art,  religion,  have  all  been 
externalized  and  smoothed  away  into  decency,  what  must  it  be  with 
politics,  which  is  the  name  for  the  religious,  the  moral,  the  public  life 
of  the  Nation  ?  Of  course,  either  as  effect  or  as  cause,  it  will  lose 
earnestness  and  dignity,  and  be  deserted  of  good  and  great  men,  either 
because  there  are  none  such,  or  they  will  not  enter  into  so  low  and 
corrupt  a  life.  Certainly,  the  devotion  to  money-making,  the  super 
ficial  spread  and  scattering  of  our  people  to  which  it  has  led ;  the 
sudden  occupancy  of  the  West  and  the  Pacific  coast,  have  diluted  the 
political  quality  of  the  Nation.  The  scattered  embers,  on  fire  from  a 
common  flame  when  they  lay  together,  have  gone  out  in  their  too  sud- 


den  dispersion.  A  good  man,  going  from  a  good  community,  is  not 
the  same  man  without  that  community.  Men  uniformly  degenerate 
without  the  support  of  their  peers.  The  public  virtue  was  not  strong 
enough  to  bear  such  a  territorial  stretch.  It  was  not  deep  enough  to 
spread  over  so  wide  a  surface.  The  representative  system,  covering  the 
sparse  and  backward  counties  in  States,  and  the  thinly-settled  and  dis 
tant  States  in  the  Federal  system,  has  gradually  swamped  the  elevation, 
culture,  and  earnestness  of  the  more  moral  and.  religious  portions  of 
the  State  or  country,  in  an  average  tone  of  vulgar  mediocrity,  and  this 
has  not  merely  outbalanced  what  is  best,  but  gradually  corrupted  it 
and  converted  it  to  itself.  The  vast  size  of  our  country,  its  scattered 
population,  and  the  relative  small  ratio  of  the  highly  educated,  moral 
ized,  and  religious  portion  to  the  rest  is,  perhaps,  enough,  under  our 
representative  system,  to  account  for  the  great  degeneracy  in  our 
political  leaders  and  our  political  life,  without  any  other  consideration. 
Our  best  men  have  refused  to  solicit  political  station,  or  to  accept  it. 
Our  legislatures  have  become  frequently  the  scenes  of  bribery  and  cor 
ruption.  Our  city  councils  sanedrims  where  grammar,  decency,  and 
truth  are  crucified.  Our  Congress  too  often  a  mere  arena  of  half- 
educated  partisans,  striving  for  sectional,  local,  and  personal  advan 
tages.  "We  have  lifted  available  candidates  to  Senatorships,  and  even 
made  Cabinet  officers  and  Presidents  of  men  wTho  could  steal  the  public 
property  and  dally  with  traitors  and  rebels.  Our  corner-groceries  and 
liquor-stalls  govern  our  city  elections. 

Now,  the  worst  of  low-toned  political  leaders  and  low-minded  or 
corrupt  political  bodies  is,  that  they  insensibly  corrupt  the  press,  and 
the  literature,  and  the  pulpit  of  a  nation.  The  very  mind  and  con 
science  of  a  people  become  gradually  denied  and  seared  by  the  con 
tinued  exhibition  of  shameless  morals,  and  low  thoughts,  and  corrupt 
men  and  measures  in  high  places.  An  illiterate  and  corrupt  common 
council  lowers  not  only  the  whole  domestic  and  foreign  reputation  of 
a  city  and  country,  but  it  weakens  the  conscience  and  defiles  the  mind 
of  every  citizen  of  the  whole  nation.  The  same  maybe  said  of  every 
weak  or  willful  President,  Secretary,  Governor,  or  other  high  represent 
ative  functionary.  Nations  are  not  responsible  for  weak  or  corrupt 
hereditary  monarchs,  or  born  ruling  classes.  But  we  are  parties  to  our 
own  shame,  and  we  sink  to  the  level  of  those  we  elect  to  govern  us. 
I  believe  that  the  politics  and  the  politicians  of  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century  have  seriously  impaired  the  people's  faith  in  free  institutions, 
have  degraded  the  conception  of  what  constitutes  greatness  and  good 
ness,  and  corrupted  very  perilously  the  National  tone  and  life. 


Hcsides  the  opportunity  of  material  advancement,  which  has  filled 
our  people  with  a  general  proclivity  to  money-making,  besides  the 
scattering  of  our  population,  which  has  superficialized  the  depth  of 
our  tone  and  culture,  and  broken  the  lines  of  moral  tradition,  tin-re 
has  been  one  other  general  cause  of  demoralization  and  degeneracy 
acknowledged  by  most,  but  the  subtlety  and  universality  of  which 
few  of  us  have  duly  measured.  I  mean  the  institution  of  Slavery,  with 
all  that  its  existence  and  maintenance  have  involved  us  in. 

The  constitutional  necessity  under  which  we  have  lived,  of  accom 
modating  our  political  views  and  action  to  the  protection  of  an  insti 
tution  which,  in  proportion  to  our  intelligence,  moral  development, 
and  spiritual  insight,  we  have  felt  to  be  bad  and  inhuman,  wrong  and 
sinful,  has  slowly  but  surely  vitiated  and  poisoned  the  mind  and  con 
science  of  our  people.  What  the  effect  of  Slavery  has  been  in  the 
South,  upon  the  intellectual  and  moral  life  of  the  people,  the  present 
war  has  more  fully  revealed.  We  knew  before,  that  neither  art,  poetry, 
nor  literature  could  flourish  in  its  baleful  shadow  ;  that  political  finesse 
and  a  long-headed  policy,  absolutely  required  to  secure  any  position 
for  States  cursed  with  such  a  disabling  yet  darling  peculiarity,  was  the 
only  form  of  talent  sure  to  grow  there.  We  did  not  know  what  a 
besotted  pride,  what  desperate  recklessness,  what  brutal  violence, 
what  tyranny  of  a  few  over  the  many,  marked  a  slaveholding  popu 
lation  !  We  could  not  have  believed  that,  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
any  population  existed  in  the  world  over  which  an  enlightened  self- 
interest  had  so  little  influence,  any  in  which  passion,  fury,  and  pride  in 
a  degrading  peculiarity,  could  hurry  the  whole  people  into  a  reckless 
sell-destruction.  But  we  have  lived  to  see  Slavery  setting  fire  to  its 
own  prison-house,  and  contending  for  the  right  to  destroy  itself,  as, 
before  now,  nations  have  only  contended  for  liberty,  and  life,  and 
honor.  We  have  seen  the  same  men  that  were  for  so  many  years  the 
terror  and  the  pest  of  our  Congress,  through  their  violence  of  temper, 
and  readiness  to  substitute  the  pistol  and  the  bludgeon  for  the  legiti 
mate  weapons  of  debate,  overawing  their  own  communities  by  their 
ferocious  wills,  and  leading  a  blind  and  ignorant  people  to  national 
ruin,  in  vindication  of  their  own  personal  threats  and  revengeful  pas 
sions.  I  do  not  believe  that  out  of  American  Indian  records,,  a  more 
savage  immolation  of  all  the  rights,  possessions,  and  future  of  a  peo 
ple  was  ever  before  made  by  a  conspiracy  of  political  leaders  for  their 
own  personal  and  private  gratification.  The  success  of  the  rebels  has 
been,  and  continues  to  be,  only  a  success  in  the  ruin  of  every  thing 
Southern.  They  succeed  in  bringing  more  and  more  fuel  to  their  own 


pyre  !  And  the  foreign  aristocracies  look  on  in  admiration  at  the  chiv 
alry,  the  courage,  the  devotion  of  a  people,  which,  without  any  real 
and  noble  object,  without  any  of  the  universal  aims  or  purposes  that 
have  justified  revolutions,  or  which  history  can  approve  or  admire,  is 
yet  capable  of  desolating  its  territory,  burning  its  cities,  sacrificing 
its  population,  ruining  itself,  sooner  than  abandon  willfulness,  caprice, 
and  pride,  and  submit  to  its  own  national  laws!  The  success  of  the 
South  has  not  been  in  the  least  success  in  its  object,  but  only  success 
in  holding  out  beyond  all  expectation  and  with  a  stubbornness  truly 
wonderful,  against  those  who  possess  the  absolute  power  of  compel 
ling  their  ultimate  submission.  Their  success,  the  longer  it  continues, 
is  only  their  more  complete  ruin.  The  longer  they  hold  out,  the  more 
is  their  territory  devastated,  their  cities  bombarded,  their  slaves  scat 
tered,  and  inoculated  with  insubordination  to  their  masters,  their  popu 
lation  starved  and  destroyed.  And  the  resolution  to  endure  this,  the 
recklessness  to  look  it  in  the  face,  as  their  rulers  must,  and  still  continue 
to  delude  with  false  hopes  or  to  inflame  the  whole  population  to  perish 
in  inflicting  the  most  serious  injuries  in  their  power  on  this  Govern 
ment  and  Nation — willing  themselves  to  perish,  if  only  they  may  have 
the  joy  of  destroying  the  government  their  fathers  and  ours  together 
framed,  —  this  is  the  noble  Indian-chief  heroism  and  patriotism,  which 
England  and  France  admire  in  the  Southern  leaders.  And  it  is  Slav 
ery  which  has  bred  and  nourished  the  passions  and  the  suicidal  reck 
lessness  which  culminate  in  this  national  self-immolation  !  You  recol 
lect  the  difficulty  with  which  the  English  government  controlled  the 
horrible  suttees  and  suicides  of  Hindoo  widows  on  the  funeral  pyre  of 
their  husbands !  This  is  what  our  truly  paternal  Government  was, 
for  the  first  year  of  the  war,  chiefly  solicitous  to  do  with  the  super 
stitious  madness  that  had  seized  the  Southern  States  —  to  prevent  them 
from  self-slaughter,  to  keep  them  from  making  it  necessary  for  the 
whole  power  of  the  North  to  rise,  as  upon  a  set  of  maniacs  careless 
of  their  own  lives  and  fortunes,  if  only  they  might  perish  in  the  gen 
eral  flame  that  consumed  their  Nation.  The  Government  could  not 
believe  this  madness  real ;  it  thought  it  feigned.  The  people  of  the 
North,  accustomed  to  the  sway  of  reason  and  the  control  of  self- 
interest,  could  not  believe  that  any  people  could  be  so  insane  and  pas 
sionate,  so  blinded  with  vindictive  pride  and  sectional  fury,  as  to  in 
voke  their  own  utter  ruin,  in  seeking  theirs.  And  so  they  temporized 
and  played  with  the  rebellion.  And  the  Government  dallied  and 
doubted,  and  the  generals  coquetted  and  postponed  battle,  and  averted 
decisive  conflicts  —  all  in  the  honest  hope,  and,  as  I  now  believe,  in 


8 

the  providentially-guided  policy  of  an  expected  return  on  the  part  of 
the  foe  to  reason  and  loyalty.  "  There  must  be  millions  of  loyal  peo 
ple  in  the  South,"  we  said.  "  The  sensible  portion  of  the  people  there 
will  rise  upon  their  own  politicians  soon.  The  moment  the  masses 
see  whither  this  thing  is  tending,  they  will  revolt." 

But  in  all  this  we  reasoned  as  about  a  free  people,  a  people  who  had 
been,  as  we  fancied,  sharing  our  own  educational  and  moral  blessings. 
We  talked  of  the  Southern  masses,  as  if  they  had  been  Northern 
masses  ;  and  with  the  Slave-mind  as  if  it  had  been  the  American  mind. 
We  did  not  know,  we  could  not  know,  what  Slavery,  successful,  tri 
umphant,  rich,  the  political  ruler  of  this  Nation  for  a  half-century,  had 
become !  We  had  no  conception  of  the  fury  of  its  pride,  of  its  ac 
cumulated  contempt  and  hatred  for  us,  of  its  besotted  conceit  and 
self-will !  We  had  forgotten  to  what  tasks  it  had  found  itself  equal ; 
what  it  had  achieved  in  the  political  arena  ;  what  an  appanage  North 
ern  wealth,  education,  and  influence  had  become  to  it ;  how  it  had 
really  acquired  the  feeling  of  being  the  natural  lord  of  this  continent, 
its  princes,  a  superior  race,  with  a  divine  right  to  rule ;  and  how,  in 
this  intense  and  intoxicating  madness,  it  had  finally  brought  itself  to 
the  full  determination,  and  to  a  not  wholly  crazy  conviction  of  its 
chance  of  succeeding  in  the  effort  to  rule  this  country  completely  and 
in  the  interest  of  Slavery,  or,  failing  in  that,  to  destroy  the  country 
and  bury  itself  in  its  ruins !  It  is  now  clear  that  the  leaders  had  this 
conviction  ;  and,  considering  the  past,  in  which  politics  had  been  their 
full  life,  while  it  had  been  only  our  pastime,  held  secondary  to  almost 
every  thing  else,  to  commerce,  manufactures,  education,  pleasure, 
profit  —  it  is  not  strange  that  they  should  have  calculated  that  our 
bulky  prosperity,  our  wealth,  numbers,  and  resources  constituted  a  lazy, 
careless,  unorganized  strength,  without  much  political  principle  or 
patriotic  earnestness  about  it,  and  that  before  it  could  be  really 
aroused  and  animated  with  a  common  purpose,  it  might  be  routed 
and  overwhelmed  by  their  drilled  and  trained  organization. 

How  near,  at  the  very  start,  this  fearful  power,  IIDW  so  clearly  rush 
ing  to  its  own  ruin,  was  to  accomplishing  our  destruction,  God  only 
knows,  though  our  Government,  I  think,  has  a  pretty  lively  sense  of 
it.  Our  imminent  danger  was  that  the  rebellion  would  succeed  at 
once.  After  a  year,  it  had  no  chance  whatever ;  but  in  the  first  three 
months  it  was  an  even  question ;  in  the  first  six  a  probable  danger ; 
at  the  end  of  the  first  nine  an  anxious  conpern.  Thank  God,  it  has 
been  since  then  only  a  question  of  how  thoroughly  intent  the  South 
was  on  ruining  itself;  and  that,  in  my  judgment,  is  the  only  alterna 
tive  left  it  now  —  a  more  or  less  complete  destruction. 


9 

But,  I  return  to  say,  that  the  evil  which  Slavery  had  so  deeply 
and  fully  wrought  in  that  great  limb  of  our  National  Body,  where 
it  had  its  seat,  it  had  to  a  most  disastrous  degree  wrought  by  sympa 
thetic  action,  on -the  whole  frame  of  the  country.     If  you  remember 
that  for  twenty-five  years  it  had  occupied  at  least  half  of  all  the 
legislation  of  the  Federal  Government,  tmctured  all  its  debates,  con 
trolled  the  division  of  parties,  and  been  the  chief  subject  of  political 
drill  and  discussion  ;  that  State  legislatures,  and  lyceums,  and  news 
papers  had  rung  with  the  theme ;  that  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  protected  it,  and,  to  calm  its  jealousies  and  fears,  made  the 
fugitive  Slave-law  binding  on  the  political  conscience  of  every  good 
citizen ;  that  every  great  public  officer  swore  to  sustain  it  as  a  part 
of  the  Government;  that  moderate  and  cautious  men  —  valuing  peace 
and  order,  contracts  and  good  faith  —  felt  themselves  called  upon  to 
discountenance   anti-slavery  teachings  which  the  generous  instincts 
and  moral  sympathies  of  the  more  elevated  and  humane  thoroughly 
went  along  with ;  that  the  immediate  commercial  and  trading  inter 
ests,  and  the  manufacturing  wealth  of  the  North,  were  complicated 
beyond  any  possible  disentanglement  with  the  continuance  of  Slavery 
and  enlisted  in  its  support — while  the  educational  and  religious  teach 
ings  were  unconsciously,  and  the  higher  literature  and  poetry,  the  plat 
form  eloquence,  the  lyceum  oratory  of  the  North,  all  purposely  strug 
gling  against  it ;  that  the  great  monetary  institutions,  the  large  cap 
italists,  Wall  street,  and  State  street,  South  street,  and  Lowell,  and 
Newark,  and  Paterson,  and  Pittsburgh  —  were  apologists  and  uphold 
ers  of  it  —  with  all  the  conservative  instincts  and  interests  of  the 
North  —  with  which  inevitably  go   the  colleges,  the   churches,  the 
clergy  —  and  with  them  the  ethics,  and  the  piety  of  the  land  —  every 
thing  but  exceptional  genius,  or  individual  independence,   or  deep- 
hearted    manly  conviction,   or  simple-hearted  womanly  instinct  —  I 
say,   when  you  consider   all  this   steel-hardened   process,   you   can 
not  help  seeing  how  tremendous,  how  unconscious,  how  thorough 
ly  inwrought,    inbred,    fastened     and    fixed    the    influence    which 
Slavery  has  had  over  the  Northern  mind,  and  heart,  and  will,  and 
character.     My  own  conviction  is,  that  not  a  Northern  man  lives, 
whose  character  does  not  bear  the  mark  of  the  Slave's  manacle,  either 
as  a  convict  brand,  or  a  martyr's  cross ;  either  in  the  distortion  which 
his  faculties  have  experienced  in  violent  contention  with  it,  or  in  the 
deformity  of  unnatural  accommodation  to  it.     It  has  created  a  class 
of  persons  —  who  may  be   considered  embodied  protests  —  with  a 
monstrous  development  of  conscience  of  this  evil,  crowding  every 


10 

more  delicate  form  of  human  sympathy  —  while  in  the  mass  of  the 
people,  it  has  more  or  less  made  moral  consistency,  political  coherency, 
and  even  full  intellectual  sanity,  quite  impossible.  I  believe  that  this 
terrible  disturbing  influence  has  acted  on  the  whole,  intellectual  and 
moral  life  of  the  Nation,  as  an  concealed  mass  of  iron,  near  the 
binnacle  in  a  wooden  ship,  acts  on  the  compass  —  making  its  indica 
tions  false  and  unreliable,  while  they  are  trusted  to  guide  the  ves 
sel.  There  could  be  no  natural  and  wholesome  development  of  the 
moral  life  of  this  Nation,  with  this  lie  and  wickedness  consecrated 
and  shrined  in  its  political  heart.  The  pulpit  of  the  country,  brave 
and  free  here  and  there,  as  courageous  and  commanding  men  chanced 
to  occupy  it,  has  been  necessarily  bound,  not  by  fear  or  interest 
chiefly,  but  by  modesty,  doubt,  and  sympathy  with  the  conservative 
class  —  the  sober  and  prudent  portion  of  the  people.  We  have  all 
been  brought  up  at  the  knees  of  good  men  justifying  our  Constitution 
in  its  compromises.  The  saintly  and  the  learned,  the  polished  and 
the  successful,  the  social  lords  and  ladies  of  the  land,  have  taught 
our  rising  youth,  our  young  clergy,  our  teachers  in  schools,  puncti 
lious  reverence  for  the  Constitution  and  the  Laws  —  reverence  for  its 
great  defenders  —  and  a  corresponding  contempt,  or  hatred,  for  the 
radicals  who  were  imperilling  the  Union  and  the  Constitution,  by 
questioning  any  of  its  compromises.  It  was  clearly  impossible  that 
our  ethics,  our  piety,  our  literature,  our  social  system,  should  not  be 
corrupted  with  the  virus  in  our  lawful  Constitution.  I  feel  its  hate 
ful  sap  in  my  own  blood.  I  can  not  be  sure  that  it  does  not  still 
corrupt  my  intellectual  currents,  disorder  my  heart,  and  glaze  my 
vision.  I  hate  it  the  more  for  some  secret  kindness  for  it  still 
lurking  in  the  tissues,  where  reverence  for  my  teachers,  gratitude  to 
our  fathers,  and  respect  for  law  and  order,  mesh  it  in  and  forbid 
it  wholly  to  escape.  I  fear  that  I  shall  find  it  rising  up  against  me 
in  the  awful  day  of  account  —  and  that  I  shall  never  fully  know  the 
injury  it  has  done  me,  till  I  see  my  image  in  the  perfect  mirror  of 
the  divine  judgment! 

It  was  this  moral  stupor,  so  deep  we  did  not  know  it,  producing 
a  distaste  for  politics — a  growing  indifference  to,  or  despair  of  repub 
lican  institutions  —  a  willingness  to  let  bad  men  administer  a  govern 
ment  thus  hopelessly  bound  in  the  cords  of  a  terrible  constitutional 
evil  —  which  made  us  such  an  object  of  misgivings  even  to  good  men 
abroad; — which  led  the  South  to  conceive  of  and  think  feasible  our 
subjugation  —  which  really  paralyzed  our  faith  and  our  efforts  for  the 
first  year  of  this  war,  and  which  was  made  the  instrument  under  God 


11 

of  bringing  us  to  the  hopeful  condition  in  which  we  now  are.  That 
condition  is  this  —  a  state  in  which  it  is  impossible  for  the  South  to 
draw  back,  or  for  the  North  and  West  to  do  any  thing  but  go  for 
ward  ;  —  a  condition  certain,  I  think,  to  end  in  the  utter  disintegra 
tion  of  Southern  society,  Southern  institutions,  Southern  slavery  — 
an  utter  destruction  of  the  political,  social,  and  industrial  existence  of 
Slavery,  securing  for  the  first  time  in  our  Nation,  a  homogeneous  peo 
ple,  policy,  and  law. 

Nobody  can  say,  that  we,  the  North,  sought  this,  or  were  even 
willing  to  have  it  come.  "The  prophets  prophesy  falsely,  and  the 
priests  bear  rule  by  their  means  ;  and  my  people  love  to  have  it  so." 
It  did  not  seem  possible.  We  were  not  up  to  it  in  our  morals,  our 
politics,  our  finances,  our  self-confidence.  We  aimed  at  the  preserva 
tion  of  the  Union  and  the  Constitution,  and  the  enforcement  of  the 
Laws.  Those  who  would  gladly  have  hoped  for  what  has  now  come 
did  not  dare  to  do  so.  The  people  of  the  North  were  not  supposed  ' 
by  any  calm  and  careful  mind  to  be  at  all  ready  to  contemplate  so 
radical  a  dealing  with  their  difficulty.  Most  slowly  and  reluctantly 
did  Congress  contemplate  a  confiscation  policy,  an  Emancipation  act 
— or  any  course  looking  to  extinction  of  the  Slave  power,  or  seizure 
of  the  constitutional  rights  alleged  still  to  belong  to  Rebel  States. 
We  could  none  of  us  believe  that  the  Rebels  abjured  these  rights ; 
that  they  did  not  still  contemplate  and  desire  reunion  upon  some 
terms — a  little  better  for  them  perhaps,  but  not  very  much  worse  for 
us,  than  the  old  ones.  And  so  we  went  on,  calling  out  our  forces  in 
driblets,  coining  our  paper-money  by  installments,  and  always  ready 
for  expected  propositions  of  peace; — until  by  degrees,  Providence 
seems  to  have  committed  the  free  powers  and  instincts  of  the  Ameri 
can  people,  to  a  decisive  and  final  conflict  with  the  Slave  power  and 
its  instincts  —  a^  conflict  in  which  one  must  be  left  forever  dead 
upon  the  field. 

The  first  and  perhaps  most  desperate  tug  in  this  struggle,  was 
with  the  enemy  here  at  home.  That  enemy  it  was,  an  old  party 
sympathy  with  the  South,  honest  as  any  mere  party  sympathy 
can  be  —  and  rooted  in  the  debates  and  cries  of  numerous  politi 
cal  campaigns  crowned  with  victory,  which  the  Government  looked 
on  with  the  greatest  dismay,  and  to  soothe  and  disarm  which,  it  so 
long  upheld  its  temporizing  policy.  The  Government  was  sagacious  ; 
the  policy  was  prudent.-  The  signs  all  indicated  it ;  and  you  remem 
ber,  how  the  triumphs  of  a  peace  policy  resounded  in  the  elections  of 
New-York,  and  the  great  Western  States.  It  seemed  for  a  few  weeks 


12 

as  if  the  nation  were  doomed  to  perish  between  the  two  fires  of 
its  open  enemies  and  its  false  friends ;  to  be  crucified  between  two 
thieves— Slavery  at  the  South  and  Party  at  the  North  !  But  thank 
God,  party  was  instantly  shocked  at  the  ghastly  image  of  its  own  suc- 
The  honest  Democracy  saw  its  real  figure  reflected  in  the 
Southern  sky,  and  started  back  appalled  at  the  treason,  to  which  it 
was  just  ready  to.  become  accessory.  The  country  was  saved,  when 
the  brave,  old,  and  trusted  leaders  of  the  Democracy— some  firm  from 
the  start,  but  many  turning  about  with  still  more  effect  in  the  mid- 
current  of  our  threatening  ruin,  beckoned  off  the  masses  ready  to 
throw  themselves  into  the  Southern  scale,  with  the  saving  cry  :  "  Ye 
know  not  what  ye  do." 

The  second  tug  was  in  the  army  itself.     There,  too,  the  bone  and 
sinew  remembered  the  old  party  cries,  and  had  a  contempt  and  hatred 
for  the  negro  which  made  even  the  slightest  concession  that  Slavery 
was  the  real  cause  of  the  war,  and  its  extirpation  any  object  of  our 
arms,  a  dangerous  thing  to  allow— nay,  a  truth  which  it  seemed  ne 
cessary  to  conceal  under  any  amount  of  self-deception  at  the  centre. 
Leaders  without  radical  sympathy  with  freedom  must  be  kept  at  the 
head  of  our  troops,  East  and  West !     The  slave  must  be  driven  out 
of  the  camps  with  the  bayonet,  and  handed  over  to  his  master.     He 
might  possibly  now  and  then  be  permitted  to  take  the  spade,  but 
never  the  musket.     So  deep-rooted  and  so  disgusting  was  the  hatred 
of  the  negro,  among  the  rougher  and  coarser  of  our  population  —  so 
greedy  the  desire  of  the  lower  class  of  foreigners  to  have  a  lower  deep 
down  which  to  look  — so  utterly  brutal  the  partisan  feeling  of  hatred 
which  portions  of  our  Northern  press  had  encouraged  toward  the 
slave,  that  I  confess  I  despaired  at  seeing  this  venomous  animosity 
even  begin  to  disappear  in  my  day  and  generation.    And  I  am  confident 
there  was  very  little  hope  of  it  on  the  part  of  our  rulers.     Yet  it  has 
begun  to  soften,  nay,  it  has  rapidly  dissolved,  and  it  is  swiftly  melting 
away — and  this,  in  the  best  possible  way— under  actual  contact  with 
the  slave  in  the  Southern  trench,  and  on  the  ships  and  wharves,  and 
battle-fields  of  the  South.  .  Our  armies,  the  rank  and  file,  have' met 
this  black  brute  — so  ignorant,  stupid,  lazy,  and  useless.     They  have 
found  him  about  as  intelligent  as  many  of  their  own  comrades,  and 
more  muscular  and  industrious,  more  useful,  and  as  kind  and  compan 
ionable.     They  see  him  toiling  for  money  at  the  wharves  of  Acquia 
Creek,  Newborn,  and  Port   Royal,  Nashville,  Memphis,  and  New- 
Orleans,  with  a  constancy,  sobriety,  patience,  and  utility,  which  inter 
rupt  and  confound  all  their  previous  notions.     They  have  found  him" 


13 

with  a  heart,  a  conscience,  a  will — in  short,  a  humanity  like  their  own. 
They  see  that  he  is  the  strength  of  the  rebellion  ;  that  one  negro  in 
the  field  of  corn  keeps  two  rebels  in  the  field  of  battle,  and  that  every 
stroke  of  the  spade,  is  a  stroke  of  the  sabre  and  a  thrust  from  the  bay 
onet  in  its  transposed  value.  They  see  that  the  only  loyal  men  in  the 
South  are  black  men ;  the  only  men  from  whom  credible  information  is 
to  be  had,  the  only  friends  the  soldiers  has,  the  negroes.  They  appre 
ciate  for  the  first  time :  1 .  The  wrong  and  inhumanity  of  Slavery  — 
in  thus  seeing  its  objects ;  2.  The  military  value  of  the  slave,  as  a 
rebel  antagonist;  3.  His  importance  as  a  loyal  ally.  And  they  drop 
their  prejudices  and  fall  back  on  their  humane  feelings  and  their  mili 
tary  and  personal  instincts  of  self-preservation.  The  army,  therefore, 
is  certainly  becoming  slowly  and  surely  —  nay,  rather  surely  and 
rapidly,  Abolitionist,  not  merely  in  its  technical,  but  in  its  more  real 
and  practical  sense.  The  period  of  suspense  on  this  point  is  passed — 
the  army  has  itself  settled  the  question  of  Northern  feeling  on  this 
subject.  It  has  adopted  the  Emancipation  policy  of  the  Government ; 
only  more  so.  And  it  is  this  army,  more  intensely  anti-slavery,  as  it 
gets  further  South,  which,  by  its  multitudinous  letters,  by  its  protests 
against  a  timid,  anti-negro  policy,  and  by  its  indignant  remonstrances 
at  any  half  measures  at  home — has  helped  settle  the  press  and  the 
pulpit  and  the  people  of  the  loyal  States  in  a  radical  anti-slavery 
policy,  as  the  only  military,  the  only  politic,  the  only  moral,  the  only 
economic  policy  to  be  pursued. 

The  only  remaining  tug  in  this  struggle — and  I  think  we  may  almost 
flatter  ourselves  that  is  now  on  the  very  verge  '  of .  a  successful 
throw — is  not  a  few-  smart  victories,  although  we  doubtless  need  one 
greatly  on  the  Rappahannock,  but  a  deliberate,  sober,  general  willing 
ness  on  the  part  of  our  loyal  people,  to  throw  the  element  of  time 
utterly  out  of  their  thoughts  and  .calculations,  and  make  the  first  ar 
ticle  of  their  creed  this  —  "  War,  till  we  have  final  and  complete  suc 
cess  !"  The  question  for  loyal  men,  is  not  when,  but  only  how  the  wrar 
is  to  end,  and  they  have  no  question  that  the  war  is  to  end,  only  when 
the  Rebellion  stops,  be  it  one  year,  five  years,  or  our  natural  lives. 
There  is  in  truth  nothing  else  left,  and  to  this  we  must  come  at  last. 
The  ship  of  state  is  at  sea,  and  the  Nation  with  all  its  treasure  and  all 
its  people  is  in  her  hold.  She  is  upon  the  red  sea  of  a  bloody  civil  war. 
Her  port  is  a  victorious  peace.  This  peace  she  can  not  make  but 
must  win.  It  is  not  for  her  to  calculate  how  many  days,  or  months, 
or  years,  she  will  struggle  with  the  waves,  before  she  gives  up  her 
post  and  returns  to  her  old  moorings.  There  is  no  return.  It  is  as  if 


14 

the  shore  she  left  were  sunk.  Disgraced  and  baffled,  her  flag  must 
turn  to  a  dishonored  rag,  which  pirates  themselves  would  spit  upon, 
did  she  abandon  her  voyage.  No,  steady  at  her  helm,  and  trimming 
her  sails  to  storm  and  fog,  sounding  in  the  shallows,  feeling  through 
the  ice,  catching  every  breeze,  and  tacking  against  every  wind,  she 
has  only  to  press  on,  making  such  headway  as  she  can,  but  never  for 
one  instant  abandoning  her  predestined  haven,  till  at  last  she  anchors, 
si i uttered  and  torn,  it  may  be,  with  any  loss  of  treasure,  with  any 
hardship  to  her  crew,  on  short  rations  or  full  as  it  shall  prove,  but  at 
her  lawful  and  her  chosen  port,  and  with  her  own  sacred  flag  at  the 
peak. 

The  moment  the  people  have  calmly  and  with  a  sober  sense  of 
the  necessity  of  the  case,  abandoned  any  idea  but  this,  we  shall  have 
removed  the  only  serious  obstacle  to  a  speedy  success.  While  there 
is  any  uncertainty  of  feeling  on  this  point— any  hankering  for  a  peace 
of  compromise  and  concession,  we  shall  have  a  war  protracted  by  in 
decision,  debate,  division — more  expensive,  more  dangerous,  and  more 
bloody — without  the  least  chance  of  the  ba^e  peace  that  is  so  meanly 
desired,  but  also  without  any  chance  of  the  victorious  peace  that  is  the 
sole  possible  termination  of  our  struggle.  Let  us  be  but  as  one  man 
in  our  solemn  determination  to  succeed  at  all  hazards  and  at  any  cost, 
and  we  shall  have  unity,  energy,  economy,  decision,  in  all  our  councils, 
and  swiftness  and  certainty  in  our  success.  And  this  feeling  I  verily 
believe  is  already  nearly  assured.  The  most  gratifying  and  encourag 
ing  aspect  in  our  affairs  has  been  the  courage,  constancy,  and  cheer 
fulness  of  our  people,  during  a  long  period  of  slight  apparent  success. 
The  Nation  has  begun  to  lean  upon  its  own  purpose  ;  to  find  support 
in  its  own  heart  and  conscience  ;  to  be  guided  by  its  faith  and  resolu 
tion,  and  so,  to  take  its  daily  food,  whether  in  the  bitter  herbs  of  delay 
and  failure,  or  in  the  manna  and  quails  of  progress  and  success,  with 
equanimity  and  resolve.  Dark  and  stormy  days  may  be  in  store  for 
us,  but  they  will  not  be  remembered  in  the  mighty  joy  of  our  final 
victory.  That  triumph  is  as  sure  as  the  harvest  that  never  fails.  It 
is  a  mere  sum  in  arithmetic.  It  does  not  even  depend  upon  victories. 
Our  enemy  loses  strength  by  every  success,  as  much  as  by  every  de 
feat.  Eight  millions  of  people  may  gain  a  victory  every  month  against 
twenty  millions,  and  if  the  twenty  millions  are  merely  constant  to 
their  purpose,  a  few  years  ruins  and  exterminates  the  foe  in  the  midst 
of  his  successes,  by  sheer  exhaustion  of  men  and  resources.  Thus  the 
loyal  cause  is  steadily  victorious,  even  when  baffled  and  beaten  in 
detail.  To  wait  is  to  conquer.  The  longer  our  forces  are  in  the  field, 


15 

the  more  obstinately  they  are  resisted,  the  larger  the  force  we  are 
compelled  to  bring  to  the  war,  the  more  completely  we  are  driven  to 
overrun  every  acre  of  the  enemy's  area  —  the  more  thoroughly  and 
completely  do  we  disintegrate  his  country,  saturate  his  barbarous 
civilization  with  ours,  carry  our  customs,  our  people,  our  temper,  and 
our  industry  into  his  territory,  and  take  moral  possession  of  his  soil. 
His  stout  resistance,  successful  skirmishes,  do  but  familiarize  us  the 
more  with  him  and  him  with  us.  I  can  not  even  regret  that  his  stub- 
borness  is  continued— for  if  he  bent  before  our  blast,  we  should  have 
passed  over  him  with  less  effect.  The  war  is  by  its  duration,  and  its 
thoroughness  preparing  the  South  to  make  a  possible  part  of  a  free 
country.  You  can  not  plough  the  yielding  sand  nor  plant  it ;  but  the 
tough  marl  may  be  broken  up,  spite  of  all  resistance,  if  only  oxen 
enough  are  put  to  the  yoke  !  We  have  oxen  enough,  and  by  the 
orace  of  God,  We  mean  to  plough  the  Southern  cotton-fields  with  the 
heifers  of  freedom  and  sow  it  with  Northern  wheat.  War  is  the  only 
culture  our  Southern  waste  admits  of.  By  no  other  tillage  can  it  be 
added  to  the  area  of  cultivated  American  civilization.  And  by  no 
discipline,  short  of  that  which  is  suffered  by  the  North,  in  its  costly 
sacrifices  of  blood  and  treasure,  and  in  its  loss  of  noble  youth,  could 
it  expiate  its  own  errors  and  sins,  and  recover  tone  and  temper,  faith 
in  its, primitive  ideas,  and  the  earnestness  and  dignity  of  its  original 
love  of  liberty,  truth,  and  humanity. 

In  every  way,  then,  the  war  is  our  medicine  ;  bleeding  us  of  our 
moral  and  political  malady,  in  the  free  States,  while  purifying  the 
Southern  area  by  the  fire  and  sword  Rebellion  continues  to  invite. 

Let  us  go  on  then  in  solemn  earnestness !  in  sacred  vigor  and  stern 
virtue-!  How  long,  O  Lord !  how  long  ?  and  God  answers,  as  long 
as  rebellion  and  resistance  to  lawful  authority  may  last.  It  can  not 
be  very  long,  if  we  are  willing  to  have  it  as  long  as  God  lists.  All 
the  signs  indicate  rapid  sinking  in  the  enemy's  resources.  His  war 
riors  are  all  gathered  and  can  not  be  increased.  His  food  is  becoming 
scarce.  His  allies  are  deserting  him  abroad.  His  iron  and  salt  and 
steel  are  failing  him.  His  locomotives  are  wearing  out,  and  he  can 
not  renew  them.  His  few  gunboats  and  ships  of  war  are  every  day 
falling  into  our  hands.  It  needs  no  prophet  to  foretell  that  another 
year  will  bring  famine  and  pestilence  into  his  ranks,  and  to  his  hapless 
homes.  •  His  slaves  are  welcomed  to  our  lines,  and  are  now  in  thou 
sands  working  in  our  trenches,  and  forming  into  our  regiments  upon 
their  native  soil.  Two  years  have  taught  us  the  art  of  war,  and  our 
system  is  acquiring  order  and  completeness.  We  are  strong  in  credit 


16 

and  easy  in  finances.  Our  resources  have  proved  tenfold  greater  than 
our  fears  or  hopes.  We  have  not  put  forth  a  quarter  of  our  strength. 
Our  armies  are  the  healthiest  the  world  ever  saw.  Our  hospitals  the 
best,  our  commissariat  of  unequaled  abundance  ;  our  affairs  now  accom 
modated  perfectly  and  with  consummate  ease  to  ourselves,  to  an  in 
definite  state  of  war.  Still  prosperous,  still  industrious,  still  unin- 
vaded  ;  when  was  a  people  after  two  years  of  such  costly  preparation 
and  such  large  outlay  of  men  and  means,  in  a  condition  of  such  solid 
vigor  ?  not  a  dollar  of  foreign  capital  borrowed,  not  an  ounce  of  food 
imported.  Meanwhile,  the  enemy  is  crumbling  into  ruin.  His  terri 
tory  is  devastated,  so  that  a  hundred  years  of  peace  could  not  in  his 
hands,  restore  the  forests,  the  gardens,  the  roads,  levees,  and  planta 
tions,  he  has  recklessly  given  over  to  the  iron  hoof  of  invasion  !  I 
have  seen  the  ruin  he  has  invoked,  and  he  has  only  to  continue  to  in 
vite  it  a  little  longer,  to  make  all  his  cities  places  for-  bats  and  owls, 
and  his  fields,  a  universal  wilderness  ! 

Oh !  that  he  would  repent  and  stay  the  mighty  hand  of  God's 
wrath  that  is  swiftly  sweeping  him  out  of  the  way  of  the  liberty,  the 
light  and  the  love  he  has  dared  to  oppose  ! 

As  for  us,  it  becomes  us  to  pray  with  all  earnestness,  that  the  Al 
mighty  goodness  may  not  break  the  instruments  with  which  he 
achieves  the  retribution  due  to  a  slaveholding  rebellion,  because  they 
did  not  meanwhile  repent  of  their  own  sins  and  short-comings  !  We 
ought  to  feel  this  war,  and  the  meaning  of  it,  and  our  complicity  in 
it  far  more  deeply  and  seriously  than  we  do.  And  it  will  continue 
till  we  feel  it  to  be  God's  work  and  our  chastisement,  as  well  as  that 
of  our  enemies.  We  must  be  thinking  in  all  humility  and  shame,  of 
our  own  blood-guiltiness  in  our  national  sins ;  especially  of  our  world- 
liness  and  materialism ;  our  devotion  to  pelf;  our  shallow  and  superfi 
cial  piety ;  our  elevation  of  base  men  to  place  and  power ;  our  want 
of  fidelity  to  man  and  God,  to  principles,  and  honor,  and  truth.  If 
we  do  not  straightway  begin  our  repentance,  by  a  stricter  attention 
to  our  political  duties,  giving  every  vote  we  cast  in  the  fear  of  Al 
mighty  God,  holding  our  possessions  as  stewards  of  the  Lord,  conse 
crating  our  bodies  to  temperance  and  our  souls  to  Christ,  we  may, 
after  having  exterminated  our  enemies,  find  some  new  vial  of  divine 
wrath  prepared  by  Almighty  justice  for  our  hardness  of  heart ! 
May  Heavenly  Mercy  avert  such  a  terrible  necessity,  by  bringing  us  to 
instant,  thorough,  and  universal  repentance  and  reformation  ! 


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